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Hey blam, did you see this? This is one of the occurrences that Baillie was talking about in From Exodus to Arthur. Also, there was an interesting paper in Nature (could have been Science, though) about mantle rocks containing about 5 times the amount of water now present in the oceans. It would be interesting to know what effect a large impact could have on releasing this water. Especially interesting in light of the fact that so-called continental drift has major problems in that virtually everything explained by it has to be done in an ad hoc fashion and since there is quite a bit of undersea topography (not just continental shelves) that is indistinguishable from normal continental crust. Let me know if you want it and I'll send you a nice review of the literature about it.

Meteor May Solve How Mythic Emperor Died
Tue Apr 9, 9:08 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - A 5,000-year-old meteorite unearthed in northwestern China may explain the legendary death of the man celebrated as the nation's earliest ancestor, the Yellow Emperor, state media said Tuesday.

The meteorite, found near a mausoleum for the Yellow Emperor in the Shaanxi province county of Huangling, may lie behind the cataclysmic shattering of land that historical records say killed China's enigmatic first emperor, the official China Daily said.

The discovery (news - web sites) also sheds light on a local legend that nine dragons broke up the ancient town of Huangling, the newspaper said, quoting Li Yanjun, a long-time Yellow Emperor researcher and one of those who found the meteorite.

Skepticism abounds over accounts of China's part-real, part-mythical forefather named Huangdi, to whom the word for "emperor" and the imperial color of yellow are traced.

Chinese legend credits him with inventing the cart and the boat, and his dialogues with the physician Qi Bo were the basis of China's first medical book, the Yellow Emperor's "Canon of Medicine," or Nei Jing.

Huangdi's wife, Lei Zu, taught China how to weave silk from silkworms and his minister Cang Jie devised the first Chinese characters, according to tradition.

Huangdi is said to have reigned from 2697 to 2597 B.C., before a dragon came and took him back to Heaven at the age of 110.

Geologists estimate the uncovered meteorite sample dates back 5,000 years, the newspaper said.

The sample, found buried deep in the ground, was only 82 cm (32 inches) long and 21 cm wide and had bumps, holes and traces of burned matter, said Li.

He said the meteorite was believed to have crashed on the top of the mountain where Huangdi was supposedly buried.